


Tied Down

by Winddrag0n



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Biting, Cannibalism, Irezumi, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, POV Alternating, Scarification, Serious Injuries, Tattoos, Unresolved Sexual Tension, parallel canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winddrag0n/pseuds/Winddrag0n
Summary: A hand, grip like iron, catches him around the wrist and wrenches his arm away. “It is impolite to touch without asking,” Hannibal tells him, voice low. The sound makes Will’s heart skip a beat.“They are my marks. I see no reason why I cannot touch them.”Hannibal releases Will’s wrist with a warning look. “It will not be without a cost.”-An exchanging of marks that escalates, as always.
Relationships: Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 80
Collections: If Music Be The Food Of Love





	Tied Down

**Author's Note:**

> [Tied Down - Jaymes Young](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Y-DefI5tk)
> 
> A specific line stood out to me here, and it formed around that. Consider this a sort of journey through the canon of the show, where a minor change sends ripples throughout it and beyond. It may have gotten a bit self-indulgent towards the end.
> 
> I referenced the script heavily while writing this. While I did my best to never lift dialogue or lines directly from it, there are times when it is close enough that I may as well have.

They have a conversation, before Will’s world burns to ashes around him.

“I was lecturing when he pulled me out. Again.”

Hannibal tips his head to the side, crosses his leg over his knee and rests his joined hands there. “He does this often, does he not?”

“Yeah,” Will sighs, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not like- I do want to help, to work cases and catch killers. But I feel bad for the students.”

“And did you?” Hannibal pauses briefly. “Catch your killer.”

“Mmhmm.” Will’s eyes flit around the room, resting anywhere but Hannibal’s face. Looking at the man often feels like staring into the sun. “Of course. We always do.”

“Of course,” Hannibal echoes, and Will can swear he sees the ghost of a smile in the man’s face. “What was your lecture on?”

“Huh?” The question catches Will by surprise, enough that he briefly makes eye contact with Hannibal. He has to look away before he is blinded. “Oh, uh. Bite marks, mostly. An older killer who was missed for a long time because people saw the bites and assumed they were a product of sexual assault. Threw the whole profile off.”

“Bite marks can simply be a result of aggression, though it is uncommon,” Hannibal comments. 

Will cannot help the tiny smile that spreads across his face. “Exactly. Typically, with sexual assault there is a bruise in the center, a suck mark. Something these bites lacked. It doesn’t automatically discount sexual assault, but it should have thrown up some red flags that were missed.”

“The act of leaving marks in and of itself is worthy of examination. A crude way to lay claim to something.”

“It doesn’t have to be crude,” Will murmurs, looking away as he realizes what he has just said. “Well, if that’s their intention than biting would be messy at best, done mostly in the heat of the moment. A blade is more precise.”

“Scarification is a less common type of body modification. Similar to tattooing, but instead the pattern is cut or branded into the skin.”

“Non-consensual body modification, then,” Will says with a grimace. “I’ll take the knife in this scenario.”

“Branding is quite painful,” Hannibal agrees. “Well then, I shall make note in your file that you prefer the knife.”

Will looks up, uncertain, still too unsure about the man sitting across from him to continue with the teasing. He steers the conversation back towards the case.

Later, much later, when they stand together in Hobb’s kitchen, Will pointing a gun at Hannibal, the fire has burned away that uncertainty just as thoroughly as it has everything else. “I know who I am, Hannibal. I just don’t know who you are anymore. All I can be certain of is that one of us killed her.”

Hannibal is looking at him, eyes glittering, no trace of fear in his eyes. “Are you a killer, Will?”

“I-” he stops, head pounding. “It’s in my patient notes somewhere, isn’t it? That I ‘prefer the knife’.” He takes a hand off the gun, slides it down to his side to where he keeps a hunting knife, flips open the sheath and pulls it out. Just as slowly, he clicks the safety back on his gun and holsters the weapon. 

“You told me it felt good to kill Garret Jacobs Hobbs. Would it feel good to kill me now, Will?” Hannibal’s eyes are locked on the knife, not out of shock, but something closer to admiration.

“That depends. Are you a murderer?”

“Do you believe me to be one?”

“I…” Will falters, eyes falling to the floor, though he does not lower the knife. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he admits, whisper quiet.

There is a loud bang- the front door, the one he had closed and locked behind him being kicked down. It distracts Will for no more than a second but that is all the time Hannibal needs. He darts forwards, hands reaching for Will’s wrists and twisting the knife back in his grip. Will fights it, he truly does, but Hannibal is alarmingly strong and obviously experienced, and Will is shaky and unconfident. The knife is turned back towards Will, still held in his own hands, then Hannibal pushes it down, harder until it parts the flesh at Will’s shoulder and slides inside. 

Will cries out in pain. It’s not the first time he’s been stabbed, but the betrayal salts the knife as it punctures him. “Hush, Will,” Hannibal soothes, one hand slipping free to cup along his jaw. “This is what must be done.” He pushes, harder, the knife wrenching deeper until it hits bone.

All at once, Hannibal jerks backwards as if he has been stung, Will sliding to the tile floor, vision going hazy. Jack charges in, gun drawn, eyes tracking between the two men. “He…” Hannibal shudders, looks horrified at what he has inadvertently done. “He attacked me, with the knife, I didn’t-”

“It’s okay, Hannibal,” Jack reassures the man, anguish obvious on his face. He crouches down before Will, pulls the gun out of his holster and takes it far beyond Will’s reach.

He cannot look at Jack, and so he looks across the room at where Hannibal’s form is fuzzing at the edges, growing darker and darker as great, knife-sharp antlers sprout from his head. “See?” Will laughs. He doesn’t know how he could have ever compared the man to the sun; he’s a black hole, devouring all the light around it. “See?”

Will goes under, and never quite feels like he resurfaces.

He makes it just under two weeks before he cannot stand it anymore.

During the trial, it was bearable; he’d see snatches of the other man in court, in the news, on the front page of Tattlecrime. He assumed that this would be enough after incarceration, that he could live with nothing but the version of Will he had created in his mind palace, shy smiles and hesitant words. It’s like staring at a faded photograph. It doesn’t work, and he cannot quite uncover why.

“You are mourning him,” Bedelia tells him, calm and aloof as always.

“He is still very much alive,” Hannibal points out.

“Yes,” she sighs, like this is all beneath her. More accurately, like she needs him to think this is, like she doesn’t care and therefore won’t closely examine what he tells her. “But even if you go to see him, it will not fix what has been lost. The version of him that you cared for has died.”

Only one part of that really sinks in for Hannibal-  _ if you go to see him. _ Such a simple solution. Unwise, at best- but even the Will in his head has turned cruel, mocking, and he knows that he must go.

Will looks haggard, like his jagged personality has finally affected his appearance as well. His eyes are cold, an anger burning like a wildfire, barely contained beneath the frosty crust. Bedelia was right, in a way- that uncertain, cautious man he had grown to know is gone forever. While he certainly appreciated Will’s demureness contrasted with the moments of confident purpose, he finds he might actually like this version of the man more.

What he does miss is the rare smiles, the way they would blossom across his face and light it up. Those, he supposes, he has lost forever, and he feels a pang of regret for that alone. It was a necessary sacrifice. “Hello, Will,” he greets, standing before the bars of the other man’s cell.

“Doctor Lecter.” He’s lost first-name privileges, it seems. Will is standing in the center of his cell and makes no indication he is going to move closer. At the very least, he is facing Hannibal.

“How is your shoulder?” The words come out with an adequate amount of remorse attached to them, a sound that makes Will’s face tighten.

“Why bother asking?” It’s said evenly, but the disgust in the words is evident. He knew that Will would need time, for the burn of betrayal to fade. The strict medication regimen to treat his encephalitis would have just ended. It is likely he is thinking with a truly clear head for the first time in a great while. “You already know.”

“I am afraid I do not, Will. I am a doctor, not a psychic.”

Will glares at him, then it melts into resignation.  _ Oh, so this is how we’re going to play it? _ He wiggles his fingers on the hand attached to the shoulder Hannibal had stabbed him in. “No nerve damage. The doctors called it ‘miraculous’. Almost like I was stabbed with exacting precision, by somebody who was intentionally avoiding permanent damage.”

“Then you are very lucky.”

“Lucky?” Will laughs, a cruel sound. “You stabbed me. I’m not sure I would call that ‘lucky’.”

Hannibal looks down and to the side, like he can’t bear to meet Will’s eyes. “I am sorry for that,” he lies. “I feared for my life and could think of no other way to stop you from attacking me.”

“So your solution was to turn the knife on me instead?”

“You were threatening to stab me, Will. Are you truly pretending you have done nothing wrong?”

“The difference,” Will hisses, anger getting the best of him now, “is that you  _ deserve  _ to feel the knife part your flesh.”

A smile is fighting for freedom on Hannibal’s face but he smothers is, frowns instead. “You are still convinced that I am the copycat.”

“I’m still trying to piece together what I’m  _ convinced  _ of. When I uncover it, what you did to me- there will be a reckoning.”

“I am confident that you will recover your lost memories and find the truth beneath.” Then Will looks at him, so full of hatred and rage. Hannibal forces himself to remember this, this raw and honest version of Will, to memorize it and keep it with him. Will will eventually calm and regain control.

It is not long before his resolve in this manner is tested. This time, it is Will who asks to see Hannibal. The man is sitting when Hannibal approaches his cell. “I used to hear my own thoughts in the same tone and timbre of my own voice,” he muses, turning to look at Hannibal as he speaks.

“And now?”

“I hear you.” He stands now, makes his way to the bars of his cell, a sad smile on his face. “I want to apologize.”

Hannibal fights back to the urge to approach within the man’s reach, knows it will only get him removed from the prison immediately. An orderly hovers nearby, ready to jump into action should it be required. “What is it that you feel the need to apologize for?”

“I’m… not entirely sure, just yet. Pieces are coming back to me, bit by bit. I’ve found that things had overlapped where they possibly should not have.” He is still wearing that sad smile, sincere regret in his voice-

_ But no, _ Hannibal reminds himself. There is nothing sincere about this farce at all. He thinks back to that naked rage, forces himself to remember it and not the reanimated puppet of the Will he used to know. Will is speaking to him, quietly and bashfully, still cautious but longing for the reassurance Hannibal-  _ No. _ He cannot fall for this. Every inch of Will screams honest regret, trying to repair things with the only friend he’s ever had. He cannot forget that he is speaking to the only person in the world better at becoming someone else than he is.

But does it hurt to pretend, just a bit? He plays along, pretends he is relaxing as Will does with each and every visit, never once forgetting those piercing, frigid eyes.

In the end, even this much proves to be a mistake. He foolishly did not expect Will to act so quickly, and now he is sinking deep into the pool, the tranquilizer dart buried in his neck.

He wakes in the steam room, tied down onto a table. A man swims into focus above him, whistling as he rummages around with some tools. Vaguely familiar. It’s difficult through the drugged haze, but he places it. “You are… a nurse, from the hospital.”

The man turns around, grinning widely. “Ah, he’s awake! Just in time.”

Hannibal coughs, tries to sit up, but the bindings are total. As he tests them subtly, he finds them unusual- he is bound in a way that exposes all of his arms, held down at the hands instead of the wrists. “I assume you are Will Graham’s admirer.”

“Correct.” The man approaches now, a scalpel in one hand and a clean white towel in the other. He kicks a bucket over with him as he goes.

“Will is not the killer you think him to be.” Depending on the intention, he may need to break himself out of this. If he breaks his fingers he may be able to slip the bonds and escape.

“No, I guess he isn’t,” the man sighs. “Not even after this, by proxy. I have very clear instructions not to kill you if possible, so don’t feel the need to struggle.”

“Are you not worried I will immediately turn you over to the police?”

The man simply shrugs. “He told me he wanted to give you a gift. Really made it sound like you’d be happy with this. Not really sure why anyone would be happy with this but hey- I have a particular set of talents he wants to make use of. What are friends for? Now hold still, unless you want this to get fucked up.”

Hannibal closes his eyes and leans his head back, steadying his breathing. When the scalpel does not cut in deep enough to kill, only to scar, he forces himself to relax and accept the marks that Will has deigned to leave.

His assailant only gets as far as nearly finishing both of the arms before Jack finds them, eyes growing wide in horror at Hannibal’s partially flayed limbs. The man makes like he is going to surrender, so Hannibal shouts- “Jack, he’s got a gun!” 

A gun fires and the man collapses to the ground, looking up at Hannibal as he bleeds out. “You really are miserable,” he groans. "No wonder he hates you." This time, Hannibal can’t fight back the smile.

Will doesn’t even have it in himself to be surprised when Hannibal exonerates him. He finds he doesn’t have much left in him, nowadays. Beverly’s murder saw to that. The look in Hannibal’s eyes when he turns to face him in his office, a mixture of hunger and surprise, enrages him. The white bandages still wrapped around his arms temper it somewhat.

He goes back to work like he still gives a shit, makes hollow promises to Jack to catch Hannibal, hollow promises to Hannibal of a companionship dangled just out of reach. The only time he really feels something are the moments he holds a gun in his hands, first pointed at Hannibal, then pointed at a social worker neither of them want to live but Hannibal saves anyways. Yes, he feels something again then, when Hannibal drops his finger and catches the firing pin- pure, unbridled rage. The intensity of it paralyzes him, freezes him in place as Hannibal pulls the gun out of his grip, cups the back of his head, whispers poison lovingly into his ear.

Even once the bandages come off Will is robbed of the sight of his handiwork. Hannibal wears long sleeves to hide his scars, not out of shame, but a twisted sort of protectiveness. “Show me,” Will demands one day, so abruptly he nearly catches Hannibal mid-sentence.

Hannibal blinks at him, long and slow like a cat, then undoes the cuffs and goes to roll the sleeves up. “No,” Will interrupts yet again. “All of it.”

The look he is given now could best be described as inscrutable, but he can see the heat behind Hannibal’s gaze. “Will this allow you to come to terms with your mistakes?” He stands and removes his suit jacket, placing it carefully over the back of the chair. “Seeing it forces you to confront the reality of what you have done.”

“I don’t need to  _ confront _ anything,” Will answers dismissively. His eyes are locked on Hannibal’s hands, watching as he unbuttons the vest and drapes it on top of the jacket. “I am well aware of my actions and their consequences.”

Hannibal almost smiles there, Will can see it threaten to emerge across his face. Instead he unbuttons his dress shirt and pulls it off, baring his arms for Will to see.

Now, he feels something. There is a half second when the unexpectedly thick hatch of chest hair catches his attention but then his eyes fall to Hannibal’s arms and he cannot help the quick intake of breath that escapes him. Unbidden, he steps forward, takes Hannibal’s wrist in his grip and pulls it towards him, staring openly at the scars. They are prominent, Hannibal clearly having irritated them and likely even applied some sort of substance to make the end result more pronounced. On his right arm there is an antler twisting up from the wrist, sharp and wickedly pointed, transforming into vines wrapped around the rest of his arm, large slender thorns waiting for a prey to be impaled upon them. On the left there begins the matching antler, exploding up into a swirling fire.

Cassie Boyle and Georgia Madchen. He had given Matthew designs for the entire body, should he find the time, though he did not expect him to get any further than he had before Jack had found them. Matthew had told him that he had experience with this, and the quality of the designs shows.

There, on Hannibal’s left shoulder, something catches Will’s eye. The last portion of the fire looks slightly, nearly imperceptibly different, not like the design had changed but as if it had been added at a later date to complete an unfinished picture. He reaches for it, wanting to feel the difference, touch the spot where Hannibal had finished Will’s marks himself-

A hand, grip like iron, catches him around the wrist and wrenches his arm away. “It is impolite to touch without asking,” Hannibal tells him, voice low. The sound makes Will’s heart skip a beat.

“They are my marks. I see no reason why I cannot touch them.”

Hannibal releases Will’s wrist with a warning look. “It will not be without a cost.”

It doesn’t even make Will hesitate. Whatever Hannibal wants him to pay, it will not be something he cannot bear. His fingers move back where they had reached for, running along the outline of the fire, feeling the place where Hannibal scarred himself for Will’s sake.

When he pulls his hand back it is caught again, Hannibal’s hand curling around his palm and turning it up, the other sliding Will’s sleeves down to expose his wrist, pulls the limb up to his mouth, sets his teeth around the joint and bites. Will flinches, eyes locking with Hannibal as the man bites harder, harder until he threatens to break the skin before easing up and sucking. When Will’s arm is released it is with a violent bite mark, an angry-looking suck bruise in the center.

Now, Will is feeling dangerously close to too much.

It never really leaves him, not when he’s looking at the bloody crime scene, not when a creature crashes through his window, not when he feels its life slip away beneath his fists. What he feels when he leaves the body on Hannibal’s kitchen table is something electric, something euphoric, something  _ powerful. _

Hannibal intends to see to his tattered knuckles but before he can react Will steps closer to him, drags the back of his hand alongside the man’s cheek just to watch the way he stiffens and his eyes dilate, blood painting him red. Closer, now, Will steps closer, brings the bloody knuckles towards the man’s barely parted lips-

But of course his hand is caught once more, and all he earns is a matching bite on his other wrist, before the first has truly faded.

Nothing feels right anymore. They burn Hannibal’s files and he asks Will to leave, now, with him. Will looks down at his wrists, empty and bare, and cannot bring himself to say yes. Maybe, if there had been something there, it would have given him the strength to give voice to the thoughts he has been smothering.

The knife in his stomach feels almost deserved. He only wishes Hannibal had stayed to watch him die.

He means to take Bedelia with him but she is not home when she breaks into her house and he cannot afford to wait. He flies to Italy with not even a pale shadow of a friend with him.

There, he kills close to recklessly, the urge filling him whenever he sees another that reminds him of Will. The betrayal cut deep and there is no one to temper it. All he can imagine when he thinks of Will is blood and fire.

But still, he longs for the man.

While he is confident about the wound he left being devastating but non-fatal, complications can arise, unexpected infections or medical errors. Part of him whispers that if Will was weak enough to fall prey to his wounds then he wasn’t what Hannibal thought he was in the first place. Another part, something more logical, assures him that the thought is ridiculous, that a person’s strength does not protect them from the worst. Mostly he just finds the idea that Will has died before he has allowed him to intolerable.

Sometimes, when the urge is uncontainable, he checks Tattlecrime. Lounds has been following Will’s recovery closely, and what sits on the front page of the site now is a photo of the man, so unexpected that the very sight of him shocks Hannibal. He is comatose, countless machines hooked up to him, a wide white bandage wrapped around his middle. He is also naked. Hannibal’s eyes track upward, to the knife scar in his shoulder, then downwards, landing on the exaggerated size of the black box doing nothing to protect his modesty. It makes Hannibal frown. Lounds probably thought she was doing Will a favor, enhancing the size of the censor in some pathetic appeal to primitive masculinity. It is clearly-

Hannibal’s hand tightens around the laptop as it hits him that he cannot say for certain because he does not actually know. The thought that there is a part of Will that is still foreign to him, something seen instead by countless doctor and nurses and  _ Freddie Fucking Lounds- _

He slams the laptop shut so hard the screen cracks.

Hannibal continues to kill men that aren’t Will, sometimes displaying them for the world to see, sometimes quietly taking them to pieces and imagining he is consuming someone else. He tells himself it’s practice, he’s working out just what sort of reckoning he will bring to Will in return. A tiny voice is whispering that he’s wrong, a low melodic tone that brings forth the image of soft curls and a crooked smile.

Tattlecrime tells him when Will is released from the hospital. Hannibal waits, does not kill again, does not draw attention to himself, only waits for the very air to change the moment Will sets foot in Italy.

He waits, and then he kills another surrogate, twists the body into a more pleasing shape, and leaves the gift where Will can find it. The police get to it first- not entirely unexpected, not entirely unfortunate- but then, in twilight, two men enter the chapel, and the sight of one nearly stops his heart.

Will looks different. He carries himself with true confidence now, walks like a man who will never doubt himself again. Though the room is empty of his gift the policeman next to him- Pazzi, of course, men like that always had a way of finding Will- hands him a file before he is distracted out the door.

The man he’s been waiting for scans the room, pulls out a photo, sets down the file and closes his eyes. He speaks aloud as he works, circles the heart Hannibal knows he can see as clearly as if he had been there, leans in to examine it- then staggers backwards, falling to the ground and scooting away until his back hits the altar. Hannibal can only wonder what it is the man is seeing. Perhaps himself. Perhaps his stag, twisted and formed of meat, not feathers.

Maybe he sees Hannibal, walking towards him with welcoming arms, a knife tucked behind his back.

When Will opens his eyes he is sweating and shaking. He lays back on the steps, gazes at the gilded ceiling, eyes shining.

Hannibal enters the catacombs. The blood Will sees will guide them together.

“Hannibal,” Will calls, the sound of his name on the other man’s tongue nearly driving him into movement, but he hears a second set of footsteps. It can only be Pazzi. He isn’t working with Will, the other man would never stoop so low, but he presents a problem all the same. Hannibal presses his back against a pillar and waits for the policeman to materialize.

In the end, Will finds him first, speaking in low tones, sending the other man away. Hannibal pockets his knife with a smile and moves further into the tunnels. It is deep within, where the light barely reaches, that he doubles back, circles Will until he faces the other man’s back, and strikes.

He presses the other man against a pillar, fits a broad hand over those piercing blue eyes. It shocks a gasp out of Will, makes his hands fly up to press against the stone, but he does not push back, does not try to struggle out of the grip, only holds himself in place and waits for Hannibal to act.

Every plan he had formed has flown out of Hannibal’s head at the feeling, the  _ smell _ of the man beneath his hands. The knife in his hand clatters forgotten to the floor. Instead the hand shoots up, finds the collar of Will’s shirt and jacket, pulls them down and away so he can press his teeth to the skin he has revealed. Will’s breath hitches, but when Hannibal bites down he cannot seem to smother the flinch it draws out of him.

The man’s skin tastes salty of his sweat, but underneath something infinitely more familiar. A flavor Hannibal finds himself addicted to after only sampling twice. He releases the flesh when it threatens to tear, and it’s not enough, not enough to fill him after so long without- he moves to the side and bites down again, drawing another gasp out of Will. Bite after bite, he travels up the side of Will’s neck, teeth meeting Will’s chin, and the man simply allows it.

Will swallows, opens his mouth, and speaks. “I forgive you.”

Hannibal jerks back as if he has been burned. Sees Will, hands still braced against the pillar, the blazing marks on his neck visible even in the dim lighting. Sees the way he trembles faintly, not with fear, but excitement. He slips into the darkness before he does something he regrets, forcing himself to ignore the way he can hear Will moving through the catacombs after, searching for him.

Will leaves Italy, and Hannibal wonders if he made another mistake. The thought distracts him enough that when he throws Pazzi out the window and locks eyes with Jack, it takes him entirely by surprise. He barely survives the encounter.

Once again, all Hannibal can do is wait. He makes it obvious, sitting before  _ Primavera  _ and sketching it. When Will sits down next to him it doesn’t feel real.

Truthfully, Hannibal remembers nothing of their conversation, his mind a high-pitched whine. Whatever he says makes Will smile.

He isn’t smiling when Chiyoh shoots him.

Hannibal scowls; he has no doubt that Will did not intend to kill him, only mark him, but he supposes there was now way Chiyoh could possibly have known.

He brings Will back to his apartment, pries the bullet out of his shoulder with nothing more than simple bindings to ensure Will remains still. The other man is dazed, barely clinging to consciousness as Hannibal works, doesn’t resist when Hannibal strips away his clothes, doesn’t fight as Hannibal lays him in the tub and scrubs the blood away. Now, at last, he knows all of Will.

Jack is kind enough to join them for dinner. After, Hannibal clears the table and lays Will across it, forces Jack to watch as the man does not resist or make any effort to stop Hannibal as he pulls away his shirt and places the knife to his stomach. Jack screams as he watches Hannibal cut the clock face into Will’s torso, a large, elegant thing cradled by the smile he left there previous. Hannibal thinks, after this, it may be the only smile he ever sees again. The hands point to seven-thirty.

Mason’s men find them as Hannibal is bandaging Will. It was inevitable, he supposes, but he was hoping to have a bit more time. Neither of them get to resist with the guns to their heads. They leave Jack to die; Hannibal knows Chiyoh will do her best to help him. 

They are hanging upside down in a meat truck when Mason greets them. Will has been eerily quiet, face ashen. It’s enough to worry Hannibal. Scarification is still a type of injury, and with how intricate the clock he drew in blood had been, Will was afforded no time to recover from the trauma before it began anew.

He wouldn’t break, of that Hannibal was certain, but he can’t help feeling like something important has jarred loose.

As they sit at the table and listen to Mason wax poetic on his plans, Hannibal is instead watching Will, who regards Mason with thinly veiled contempt. Cordell leans too close to him, mistakenly believing he is handling prey and not a barely restrained predator. He loses a piece of his cheek for his mistake. Hannibal watches Will, face bloody, spit the lump of flesh out like it’s worthless. It makes his heart beat double time, just for a moment.

Then they are separated, which is intolerable. Hannibal can handle how he is strung up, arms wrenched painfully behind him, but when he sees the branding iron his resolve falters. Luckily Mason is more tempted by the vast expanse of unblemished flesh on his back and places the brand there, instead of over Will’s marks on his arms. Unacceptable, but if Mason had been just a little bit more clever, he may have truly wounded Hannibal.

It’s Alana, in the end, who comes to their rescue. He had been slowly working on Margo but it seems, as always, Will had been quicker without even consciously trying. “You’re the only one who can save him,” she whispers, knife held loosely in her hand. She is undoing everything she had orchestrated, just to save a man she used to consider a friend.

Hannibal finds he understands the sentiment. Alana and Margo depart with a chunk of his hair, leaving one of his hands free in exchange.

He makes short work of the guards and from there it is only a quick run to where Cordell is performing the surgery. Hannibal catches him with the knife on Will’s face, not yet cutting skin, sees genuine panic and fear in the paralyzed man’s eyes and for a moment everything goes white. When it clears Cordell is dead and Mason wears his face. He carries Will out in his arms, cradled to his chest like something precious.

Will sleeps, for a time, as the paralytic wears off. Hannibal stays by his side to watch the moment he finally wakes. They talk of teacups, time, and the rules of disorder. It feels final in a way Hannibal cannot shake. “I don’t want to think about you anymore,” Will whispers. The words wound him in a way he didn’t know was possible. When he raises his head their eyes do not meet. “Goodbye, Hannibal.”

He kneels in the snow, hands behind his back, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding of the gaping wound Will had inflicted on him. No one sees it, no one will see the mangled scar it leaves but Will, who may never look at him again. All he can do is remain where the man can find him and hope he cannot resist the pull the same way Hannibal cannot.

Hannibal looks at Will, and Will keeps his head turned away the entire time.

It was an idea that came to him as he was healing, and maybe a bit drunk. When he wakes up in the morning, sober, the idea is still with him, stronger now.

They have exchanged many marks, both permanent and fleeting. Hannibal’s incarceration feels temporary, and it feels like the smooth expanse of his skin is equally fleeting. They will find each other, again and again until he is one mottled clump of scar tissue, as mangled on the outside as he feels on the inside. He waits until his chest has healed and he has chosen the right place. Only then does he act.

The door to the tattoo shop swings open. “Will Graham,” he tells the artist currently at the desk, ignoring the way their eyes widen at the sound of his name. “I have an appointment.”

“Yeah, of course. One sec.” They flip through the appointment book, find his name, and then call another back into the parlor, drawing forward a new person, tall and broad and bearded.

They won’t mean anything, Will told himself, they are simply shields, places to mark before Hannibal can get to them. Despite this, when the artist asks what he has in mind, he describes his ravenstag, the forest, and the strange comfort he finds in the dark. It takes three sessions to cover his back in the midnight forest, beams of moonlight slipping through the trees and illuminating the ravenstag standing proud in a clearing.

Jack tries to draw him back to Quantico, but even that is a half-hearted attempt. He can see how it has broken Will, broken all of them, and does not push the matter.

The tattoo heals and Will feels an itch beneath his skin, all the places where he is not yet covered. A conversation with Chiyoh comes back to him, when they had spoken on the need to mark-  _ Irezumi _ , she had called it, traditional Japanese tattooing, done with long-handled needles. A slow and painful process. It feels… correct.

There are very few people who know the technique. Will finds one in Maine. Their correspondence is extensive before he makes the nearly fourteen hour drive to visit her shop. Again, she asks what he wants, and this time he offers nothing. Her work suits him perfectly without his own mind corrupting it. When she presses, asks for even just a basic concept to work off, he thinks of Abigail, thinks of Georgia, says blood and fire and destruction. He drives up, stays in a hotel for the weekend, does this until his right arm is covered as thoroughly as his back. The artist continued the theme his back had begun; the trees curl forward, around his shoulder, before they catch fire and burn to ash as they travel down his arm. It ends in a white fox with nine tails, tips of ears, face, legs and tails stained a blood red, the fire that burned the forest gleaming in its eyes.

It’s perfect. Once the arm has fully healed he returns to her to get the other done. It’s on the first day of the first of these sessions that he exits the shop and collides with a woman, blonde and bright and cheerful.

“Shit,” she says as she drops her shopping. “Oops. You didn’t hear that, Wally.” The boy with her rolls his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Will apologizes, crouching down to help her gather everything. It doesn’t seem like anything has broken, thankfully.

“Probably my fault. Wasn’t really watching where I was going.” She grins at him in a way that seems to dim the ghost of Hannibal that always sits inside his head.

He only shrugs. “Not like I was either.”

The boy interrupts them. “Oh, wow! Mom, look at his arm!” He is staring openly at the sleeve covering Will’s right arm, the fox dancing in the flames.

“Wally, don’t be rude,” the woman chastises, but she does look. “Nice work, though. Safe to assume it’s from this place?”

Will nods. “Getting the other one started now.”

“Wish I had that courage, sometimes.” The woman sighs. “To make a change that big.”

What he says next is a spontaneous decision. She is receptive, turns towards him and smiles when she talks, soothes him and muffles the buzzing in his skull. “How about brave enough for dinner?”

She laughs, reddens, but accepts.

Towards the end of his second sleeve, he starts staying with Molly and her son instead of a hotel. The trees on his left arm fall prey to frost, frozen solid as the snow and ice on the ground. At the edge of the clearing a wolf is silhouetted by the moon, that shadow it casts something far larger and more twisted than itself.  _ Wechuge,  _ his artist had told him. With some artistic liberties taken, as Will had made it abundantly clear that he does not want a human figure on his body. Nothing that could twist and morph in his hazy moments, grow Hannibal’s face and speak to him.

He does not want to make the drive with healing legs, and so before he starts the lower half of his body he moves up to Maine. His relationship with Molly grows as the tattoo extends downwards, over his ass and encompassing his legs. It is the earth beneath the forest, filled with the bones of the ravenstag, the blood of the kitsune and the viscera left behind by the wechuge. Not long after his legs are healed, they get married.

Will has no one to invite to the wedding save his artist. He prefers it this way.

His chest is left untouched, marked only by the fading clock Hannibal had carved into him a year ago.  _ I’ll get it done later, _ he tells himself. Later never seems to arrive.

Will wears the tattoos openly, tanktops and shorts in the summer, makes no effort to conceal them. When Jack finally finds him it is winter, everything concealed by the thick clothing he is wearing. Later, when he talks his way into dinner, he can’t entirely contain the surprise that flashes across his face when Will removes his jacket.

He should have known better than to leave Jack alone with Molly, but he needed to escape for just a moment. The fatal mistake comes back to haunt him when Molly gently urges him to go. “I’ll be different when I come back,” he whispers, head in his hands.  _ If, _ the voice sings to him.  _ If you come back. _

She smiles at him tenderly. “I won’t.”

Hannibal sends him a letter warning him not to return, for the sake of his mental health. It’s so laughably transparent that he decides to go just to spite the man.

The looks Price and Zeller shoot him are somewhat amusing, though Zeller’s morphs into admiration at the artwork on his arms. “Nice ink,” he says.

Will nods distractedly. All he hears in his head is the case, swirling and swirling around him. Of course Jack had brought him back for a biter. Maybe Hannibal knew. Maybe that’s why he made the feeble attempt to warn Will away, ‘for his own protection’.

None of his thoughts are sticking, everything is floating around and bouncing off each other. It feels like he’s missing an essential part of his own mind, missing the glue to hold it all together, and he doesn’t know where it’s gone.

But that’s wrong, because he knows exactly where it rests, locked away, waiting for him to set it free.

When he goes to see Hannibal he wears a long-sleeved shirt, sleeves buttoned to conceal all of his armor. Hannibal is uncharacteristically snippy, openly goading Will and taunting him, all sharp spines and biting remarks.  _ He’s upset _ , Will thinks suddenly,  _ that I abandoned him for so long _ . When he slides the file through to Hannibal, he almost feels the urge to smile.

It’s alarming how easily they fall into their old routine. There are more bodies, a chance meeting that ends with Will experiencing how it feels to be slammed against the ceiling. Time is running out again, another body due, but he is so wrapped up in this old familiarity that it still manages to catch him by surprise.

When he hangs up the phone there is a hole inside of him, something vast and unfixable. In time, it may scar, but it will never fade like the clock on his chest.

The next time Will visits, he brings with him a blinding fury. “I’ve had it with you crazy sons of bitches,” he growls, all anger and indignation. “What did you say to him?”

Hannibal tips his head and smiles. “Save yourself. Kill them all.”

Then, Will does something unexpected; he yanks the wedding ring off his finger, waves it in front of Hannibal like a lure. “This is what you want, isn’t it? Has been from the second I came back.” He pulls the door to the box leading into Hannibal’s cell open, throws the ring violently in the tray. “Then you can fucking have it.”

The motion is so powerful that the button of his sleeve slips undone, riding up and exposing whispers of a colorful pattern. Hannibal’s eyes lock onto it immediately. Will notices, scowls, and sets the sleeve back in place. Eyes not moving, Hannibal asks him about his wife.

Once Will has gone, Hannibal pulls the tray towards him and plucks out the ring. He holds it up to the light, admiring the way it plays off the plain gold band. It won’t fit on any of his fingers.

He smiles when Chilton comes to taunt him, smiles when Will uses him as bait and lets him be consumed by the dragon. They are getting desperate. All he needs to do is wait.

But then, Will brings him news of the dragon’s death, and the smile on his face falters. He tries to goad Will, draw him back into their blessed darkness, can only watch as he steps away, tells him that he only rejected him because he  _ knew  _ it would make Hannibal turn himself in. Will places his palm on the glass, looks at Hannibal with something like longing, then turns and tries to leave forever.

It is a temporary forever; the death was false. Delightfully, what the dragon now wants is him.

There is a moment, Will inside his cell, looking up at him as sweetly as he can without smiling, when he whispers  _ please. _ Hannibal drinks it down like a fine wine.

The dragon breaks them out of the transport van. Hannibal takes a moment to admire the sunlight, the fresh air, the feeling of freedom before he steals the car and pulls up alongside a dazed Will. “Going my way?” he offers with a crooked grin. Will frowns, but he gets inside the car nonetheless. 

Hannibal resists until they have gotten to his home on the bluff, walked along the cliff’s edge and talked of erosion, set a fire roaring in the fireplace. “Show me your armor.”

Will sighs, like he knew this was coming. “Will you allow me to protect my modesty, at least?”

It makes Hannibal pause. “While I will not judge your decisions, Will-”

He scowls, now. “I didn’t tattoo my dick, Hannibal, jesus. It just. It’s my whole body.”

“Then whatever will make you comfortable.”

Will turns away from Hannibal and begins to strip away his clothes, revealing inch by inch what he had desperately tried to keep hidden. The sight of it takes Hannibal’s breath away. The forest covers him, safe in the center and crumbling on the edges. He takes his time, fingers trailing across the ink, holding out Will’s arms to inspect the entire design, the way the trees die and the way the grass turns to dirt and bones and blood.

When he walks to Will’s front the man covers himself with his hands and turns away. There, on his chest, there is the obvious void where Hannibal’s clock sits, faded but unmistakable.

Hannibal feels the lump in his throat and when he speaks, it comes out scratchy. He moves forward, places his hand on the other man’s neck, murmurs his name-

But Will brushes the hand aside, leans down to pull his underwear back on. “The dragon will be coming for us,” he says. “We need to be ready.”

It is with disappointment that Hannibal pulls away. “Then perhaps we shall greet him in something more suitable.”

A part of him is surprised when Will changes into the clothes he is offered without complaint.

The dragon comes, leaves them bloody and broken, but they emerge victorious. On the edge of the cliff, they entwine. “It’s beautiful,” Will gasps. “Hannibal, I-”

Hannibal cups his chin and kisses him, drawing a beautiful, broken noise out of the other man. Will sighs against his mouth, pulls back, and tips them over the edge. Hannibal doesn’t even feel the urge to stop it. If they die, it will be together. He angles them the best he can, to share the moment the water shatters them.

At the last possible moment, Will turns them and takes the brunt of the impact along his left side.

Hannibal surfaces, barely clinging to Will’s limp body. “No,” he whispers, ignoring the sharp pain of his own injuries. Will is dead weight in his arms, head lolling back, a trickle of blood slipping from his ear. “No, Will, no-”

Chiyoh is in the water, he had made sure of it earlier, as he had envisioned an escape at sea with a much longer journey to the bottom. She will find them quickly, there are countless medical supplies on the boat. It may not be quick enough for Will.

The thought of it is a wound that Hannibal does not think he is capable of healing from.

Everything is dark. Light returns slowly, followed by dulled sound and finally, touch. More specifically, pain.

Will opens his eyes. His body is red hot fire and pain, but he is alive. A strong hand behind his back sits him up, something is said but it is muffled and distant.

Hannibal moves to his other side and speaks again. “Will. How are you-”

“I can’t hear out of my left ear.” Hannibal stills. 

“I was afraid you may have some form of hearing loss. Will, I need you to-”

His head is pounding, throbbing. He brings up both hands to press against his forehead. Only one connects.

Both of them fall silent. Will lowers his arms, turns his head to his left, and sees where it ends at the elbow, wrapped tightly in white bandages.

He laughs. The wechuge has lost its shadow, the one thing that marked it as Other. It could slip in among the wolves now, unnoticed, its true nature hidden. He laughs again.

“You lost it,” Hannibal murmurs, “in the fall. I tried to save it despite the tissue damage and the shattered bones, but I was unable to do so. I am sorry for failing you.”

“Did you eat it?” Will finds himself asking, making Hannibal tense beside him.

“I did not,” he finally says. “I… saved it. For…”

“To let me decide.” A hand- the one he still has- traces the bandages around his chest. When he presses, lightly, he feels the cuts beneath them. A product of the fall, most likely, but in his exhausted delirium he cannot help but picture the lines of the clock, bloody and weeping. “We can’t continue like this, Hannibal. These scars we’re leaving. It has- it has to stop.”

The last thing he feels before the haze of unconsciousness takes him once again is Hannibal laying him back down, hears his voice- “Then stop we shall.”

Later, when they are well enough, they eat his arm together. Hannibal stares at him like he is looking at the sun. He cannot bring himself to ask what Hannibal has done with the skin.


End file.
